


Cutting Teeth

by DilynAliceBlake



Category: Addams Family - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Addams!Harry, Pairings undecided, i changed harrys needs, i wanted to write a petunia who was actually a decent parent to harry, so instead of changing her behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 13:48:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20779592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DilynAliceBlake/pseuds/DilynAliceBlake
Summary: Lily Evans Potter is infertile and magical means aren't helping.  Petunia Evans Dursley kindly reminds her sister that science exists, and Lily's egg donor requirements catch the attention of a job hunting Morticia Addams.  From there, things proceed as normal.  Well, to the degree that Addams and Normal usually coexist; which is to say, normal is really subjective anyhow.





	1. Chapter 1

Lily Evans knows before she’s been out of Hogwarts a year that she won’t be able to carry children of her own. It breaks her heart, knowing she can’t give her husband an heir, even through the most dubious of magical means. She confides in her sister Petunia, who is two months pregnant and glowing. She only sits smug at Lily’s plight for a little while, and doesn’t even let a whole hour pass before asking the obvious question. 

“And what about regular means?” she asks, and gives a halfhearted sneer at her sister’s befuddlement.

“Science, Lily. I know they didn’t teach you much off in that school of yours, but surely you’ve heard of the recent strides in the medical world?”

Petunia offers her sister this, and the use of her phonebook to hunt down the nearest clinic. It doesn’t take as much persuading as it might to convince James, once he learns that she can carry the child herself. His face does scrunch up quite comically at the use of “eggs” in relation to humans, but with some explanation he agrees.

He mentions offhandedly that it’s a shame the baby’s mother won’t be a witch, and the woman flipping through something or other on a bulky computer at the desk assures them that they can take religion into account when screening for a donor. They ask James and Lily if they are looking for anything specific in looks; hair color, eye color, height and the like. Lily suggests that if they could, under education, list something about being good at potions. The response is skeptical, but the worker is professional, and James comes from money. They’re written off easily as rich and eccentric.


	2. Chapter 2

Morticia Addams, recently job searching and with a very supportive, or perhaps exasperated, case worker, hears about the couple from Britain looking for a witch with a knack for potions willing to sell parts of her insides to help them have a baby. She gets into contact immediately.

“Isn’t it exciting, Gomez? We’ll be helping these two start their very own family!” to which Gomez responds in full support of whatever makes Tish happiest.

There is a meeting wherein Morticia delicately broaches the subject of her family history.

“I am not a light witch,” she says, “My family has always specialized in death magics. If the baby takes much after me, it may end up being a peculiar child. You understand, of course, that I want every guarantee that no matter what, the child will be taken care of to the best of your ability. I will be in contact should you have any questions about developments of a  _ strange _ nature.”

James is quick to reassure her, of course, because this is what his wife wants. It’s also a way for his potential child (or children) to be registered as fully pureblood. No matter how he himself feels, discrimination is still rampant in their world, and he wants only the best for his family in this and everything else.

“My best friend is Sirius Black-” he begins, at which Morticia’s eyes light up.

“The scoundrel! I’ve heard of him! He comes from a good family; they once vacationed in the states.” Vacationed, here, being a fancy way of saying that when Sirius’ family were in trouble with the law that they couldn’t buy themselves or talk themselves out of they were conveniently out of the country until things were sorted back into their favor.

“Didn’t he once try to feed one of his classmates to a werewolf?” she asks with glee. James blanches, but Lily has gotten the measure of the woman before her through what correspondence they’ve exchanged, and she is quick to respond in the affirmative.

“Yes, one of their other friends, Remus, nearly took poor Severus’ leg off. He was my best friend at the time before we had a bit of a falling out; he’s a potions prodigy himself. Severus and James were feuding at the time,” Lily explains, pulling out a photo album she brought. Lily understood Morticia’s need to know about the family and life of the people she would (hopefully) be helping to have a baby. How the child would grow up had to weigh in their favor for this to go smoothly.

“Here’s Severus and I when we were children down in Cokesworth. There were rumors that the river was poisonous, but of course, nothing was ever proven.”

Morticia smiles at the boy’s complexion and sullen glare. “How absolutely precious! Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say he and I were related. My Wednesday’s sulking looks just the same. It’s something in the eyes, I think.”

Lily beams back at the foreign witch while James bites his tongue and fidgets. He’s out of his depth here, and clever enough these days to know when to keep his mouth shut. Lily flips to one of their wedding photos and taps a manicured finger on the groomsmen.

“Remus and Sirius. They would be the baby’s godfathers.”

“What fetching scars,” Mrs. Addams enthuses at the sight of a golden eyed Remus, one sharp canine peeking out over his lip in a rarely unselfconscious grin. “Did they try to kill your Severus often?”

Lily makes nice while James mouths ‘Your Severus’ in clear horror.

“Oh, only a few times on school grounds. Of course, Sev gave as good as he got; at one point he even modified a spell specifically for use against Black.”

“Was it terribly gruesome?” Morticia asks, clearly delighted. Lily rolls here eyes to express how above the theatrics of it all she was at the time.

“Positively fatal. You wouldn’t believe how complicated he made the counter-curse.”

The Matriarch of the Addams’ Family is beyond thrilled with what she’s seen. Between the werewolf and the connection to the infamous Blacks, any child will be, as far as she is concerned, well looked after indeed. Arrangements are made, a blood binding with Sirius stipulated, and a copy of some of Severus’ less savory works wiggles its way into the terms.

“Look at it this way,” Lily tells James later, “You can think of it as Severus helping me have a baby with you.” With an argument like that the Potter heir can’t be anything but smug.


	3. Chapter 3

Lily contacts Morticia when she can’t place her pregnancy cravings, and receives cookbooks of recipes along with family photos in the mail. James loves his wife too much to remain leery, and Sirius nearly has a heart attack while visiting to see Lily drinking things that easily qualify as poisons. He finds the muggle methods fascinating, and pales dramatically at the mention of “Lady Addams nee Frump.”

Are you sure you know what you’re doing Lils?” he asks once, and then regrets it as he’s sufficiently yelled into submission. Sirius agrees to be godfather for the kid and “love the little tyke come rattles or rattlesnakes.” They bind his promise with blood, and come Harry’s birth Sirius couldn’t be more smitten.

The question of whose magic he takes after is answered quite clearly, if it wasn’t already, when Harry refuses to take his milk without goat’s blood and arsenic. His eyes are darkly obsidian, and he grows a fang as his very first tooth.

When Remus meets him he’s leery. “It’s just, well, he looks a bit like Snape, doesn’t he?”

“Preposterous!” Sirius shouts, “Our little Harry is much to fetching-” he starts, but Remus gives him a  _ Look _ , and after swearing him to secrecy they explain. Of course, between his Great Aunt Dorea and the ties to Sirius settling, little Harry has just enough Black blood to throw them all for a loop. When Remus peers down at him Harry’s eyes flash Sirius’ icy grey blue, and settle after a moment into Remus’ own inhuman gold.

“A little metamorph!” Sirius exclaims, as happy with this as with everything else Harry has ever done, from blinking to blowing spit bubbles.

“Is that his first magic?” Remus inquires with interest.

“Hardly,” Lily scoffs, and pointedly sets Harry down at the top of the stairs. Remus, of course, panics, but the rest of those gathered know better and merely watch as he goes tumbling and bouncing down.

“You should see the trouble we have keeping him out of the fireplace,” James laments. “It wouldn’t be such an issue, but what if someone floos?”

At the bottom of the staircase Harry’s eyes have reverted to black and he’s busying himself chewing on his foot.


	4. Chapter 4

The Potter’s go into hiding because, natural or not, Harry was born to them. With some reluctance, Peter is chosen as the Secret Keeper.

“It can’t be me,” Sirius insists, “They can’t go after both you and me. Where would little Harry end up?” It’s true that, legally, Remus isn’t an option, and there aren’t many people who know the real truth about Harry.

“Keep him in dark places,” might slide, but “Give him plenty of sharp objects, and don’t forget to poison his baby food,” aren’t instructions they can give to just anyone.


	5. Chapter 5

Love is not actually the secret to how Harry Potter survives the killing curse, but how was Albus Dumbledore to know that Harry would apply his rudimentary skills at catch to an Unforgivable curse?

“Avada Kedavra!” Voldemort hisses, to which Harry responds “Ba!” and throws the ball of light right back. If the night weren’t so tragic it might be considered funny.

Sirius finds Harry amidst the setup for a Horcrux of all things, happily gnawing on a writhing piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul. 

“No, no, Harry, don’t play with that!” he yelps, and of course Harry swallows it whole.

“That can’t be good for you,” Sirius bemoans, already failing in his duties as a newly appointed guardian. Harry pouts and drools.

“I know, Prongslet, you’re just teething. Here,” Sirius reaches towards a mostly decimated shelf and hands Harry a cursed knife made of bone before he can start to really fuss.

“Play with that while Uncle Padfoot cleans up this messy ritual nonsense. It wouldn’t do to have any smelly death eaters figuring out what old Moldy Shorts was up to."


	6. Chapter 6

The runic circle is mostly cleared away by the time Harry throws the knife at Sirius with a shrill shriek, but Most of Harry’s cursed toys won’t turn on a Black.

“Did you get all the venom off of it,” he coos, lifting Harry not quite as cheerily as he might have before all this. Hagrid shows up to find Sirius holding Harry in one hand and the knife in the other. He doesn’t exactly have time to explain before being conked soundly on the head.

Harry is well fed on poison and corrupted soul as a giant of a man delivers him through the night. It’s very dark, and no one looks very closely at his eyes. He is left chilly on a doorstep just before a cold rain, and despite the weather and the strangeness, or perhaps because of those things, he sleeps soundly until morning.

Petunia finds him, eyes black as pitch or tar, with fangs for baby teeth, and she screams.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry is an unnerving child. He stays skinny, no matter how she feeds him, throwing up all but the most questionable of table scraps. She finds him eating bugs and raw meat and other unsavory things. In the end she just shudders and leaves him to it, giving him what she can, but he’ll only take bread or cheese molded, and fruit so rotted it brings flies. She catches him more than once drinking laundry soap.

He won’t sleep in the crib, or any rooms with windows. Somehow she finds him when he can barely walk in places like the clothes drier or the oven. She finally sets him up in the cleaning cupboard beneath the stairs. At least she knows he’ll be fine if he breaks into the bleach or windex.

When he is four and takes to talking Petunia almost immediately finds herself scolding him to be quiet. She doesn’t mean to snap, but he says such disturbing things.

“Petunia-the-Spider died today. She was my favorite friend.”

“Did you bury her, or throw her away?” Petunia-not-the-Spider asks, and Harry smiles with his still too sharp teeth.

“I ate her,” he tells her agreeably, and Petunia gets the impression that perhaps the spider with her namesake wasn’t dead at the time. Did it die, she wonders, by suffocation, or perhaps perish in stomach acid. Then again, for all she knows Harry is so fond of poisons to build up venom.


	8. Chapter 8

Petunia does her best not to let anything on to Vernon about how strange Harry truly is, and at first it’s easy. Her husband, after all, will barely look at the boy. Then Harry finds the discovery channel, and it takes more than just himself to play his new favorite game. He calls it Harry Hunting, and it’s one of his less terrifying inventions. After that he has to be banned from the T.V.

Before he starts school Petunia shows him a picture of his mother. He’ll be leaving the house more often, and before long she suspects that  _ those people _ might begin feeling a need to check in on him. She huffs and gestures to his unnerving eyes.

“I know they change color,” she insists, “I’ve seen you do it. You have to make them look like  _ this _ .”

“Why?” Harry asks suspiciously, and Petunia struggles through as brief an explanation as she can manage for her nephew. 

“My sister, your Mum, was a witch. I think she did something freakish, or perhaps made some sort of  _ deal _ to have you. She told me there was going to be a ritual with some of your dad’s rotten friends. Something with blood, that she didn’t want anyone else to know about. People might start to ask too many questions if you don’t look like her.”

Harry wonders what the sweet looking girl in the photo did to make him. He thinks about blood and death and questions, and practices until he gets the green of Lily Evans’ eyes exactly right.


	9. Chapter 9

The fourth time that Harry starts a fire in the kitchen with grease, Petunia swings the frying pan at him and forbids him from burning the food.

“Eat it before you’ve cooked it or find your dinner somewhere else!” she insists. “You need to pass for  _ normal, _ Harry.”

Lily’s sister really does her best, but by the time Harry’s eight he has a reputation for being disturbed. He can’t get the hang of what’s okay quite quickly enough, and Petunia merely sighs when Harry growls back at Marge’s dog Ripper from his place in the tree.

“Will everyone I meet always hate me?” he asks, and if Petunia could confront her sister about anything it would be what she was thinking. Dudley no longer indulges Harry in most of his games now that Piers has declared him “too weird.” Harry hunting is the only remaining sport Dudders will play with his little cousin, and Petunia knows that Harry misses their strange and violent little amusements. She doesn’t have the heart to lock him in the dishwasher and turn it on herself, though, and he was getting to big to fit anyway.

“Dudley doesn’t hate you,” she attempts to assure him. “He’s just making new friends is all.”

“Normal friends?”

“Yes, normal friends.”

“I only ate battery acid  _ once _ ,” he implores, and Petunia hands him a mushy apple with a sigh.

“I know. Now go to your cupboard before your Uncle gets home. He’s still upset that you dissected the dead mouse we gave you for Christmas.”

“What did he  _ expect _ me to do with it?” Harry splutters. Eating dead mice was strictly Not Allowed.

He stops by the trashcan to dig out a torn shirt on the way.

“I can buy you new clothes,” she reminds him, but knows by now that he’ll refuse.

“They don’t smell right,” he argues.

“I know,” she capitulates, because anything that Harry doesn’t want to wear will shrink or disappear like it always does, and this is a battle she’d long ago lost.


	10. Chapter 10

Between Dudley’s recent bouts of rebellion and Harry’s inability to stay out in direct sun, they had decided not to drag him with them to the zoo. The only one nearby who will watch him, however, was the cat lady Miss Figg, and she had just recently broken her leg.

Petunia worries, but she has no choice but to bring him with them, and she hopes that the ice lolly has enough plastics and preservatives in it not to make him sick. Most cancerous artificial sweeteners, she knows, are close enough to toxic for Harry to stomach.

They go to the dim coolness of the Reptile House, and things almost seem to be going well. But then Dudley wants to meet the Brazilian Boa Constrictor, and Harry does his best to help him.

“He tried to kill me!” Dudley wails, and Harry didn’t really, but it  _ was  _ dangerous, and her nephew just doesn’t understand.

“We’ve talked about this,” she tells him sternly. “It’s just like with the knives, and the drowning, and the stairs.”

“For regular people it’s not fun,” Harry recites dutifully, and she locks him into his cupboard with a nod and the soured milk.


	11. Chapter 11

The next day, Harry gets a letter, and Petunia daren’t explain to Vernon that Harry isn’t like the rest. Vernon insists he not attend a school full of freakishness, and Petunia wonders how they’ll possibly handle Harry if he goes.

Secretly, Petunia is thankful the grizzled giant who knocked down the door ties Vernon’s shotgun into a knot. She doesn’t want to be around for Harry’s first exposure to any sort of carnage or gore.

While Hagrid isn’t looking, Harry swallows one of the live mice in his coat pocket, because he’s only really been forbidden from eating dead ones. He’s been very hungry, and there are no chemical cleaners or convenient containers of gasoline here for him to snack on.

They depart the next morning, and between her fretting over Dudley’s new tail and attempts at soothing Vernon’s temper, Petunia taps her eye and mouths “ _ Be normal _ ,” in Harry’s direction. Harry checks to make sure his eyes are green, and gets ready to pretend to be like other children; for the first time in his life without his Aunt’s constant guidance.

The weather isn’t as pretty as the storm the night before was, but it’s reasonably overcast, and Harry is nestled safely in the shade of his new companion’s bulk as they ride their little dingy back towards the mainland.


	12. Chapter 12

Morticia Addams checks in on what she considers to be her extended family from time to time through the use of her family’s scrying bowl. She is witness to Harry’s first fang, and the first time he plays catch with Sirius Black and a knife.

Sirius gets arrested for blowing up nearly twenty people to avenge young Harry, and Morticia worries over where the baby will end up with Sirius spending time in Azkaban. He is left, she sees, on the doorstep of a worryingly normal house, but the woman who lives there adapts quickly to Harry’s unique needs. He is given a cupboard full of spiders and household poisons, and sent out at dusk once he’s old enough into the yard with a pair of impressively dangerous looking garden shears. They often let him out after dark, and always save the rotted food for him.

Though at first she was concerned, her fears are soon put to rest, and she couldn’t be more satisfied with his care. Still, whenever he goes from looking fashionably skeletal to looking actually hungry she sends him a care package in the mail; always unsigned because she doesn’t want to intrude.

“For Harry,” she writes, and sends by owl whatever is too dangerous to make it through international customs.


	13. Chapter 13

Harry saves most of the fun flavored jelly beans he gets on the train, in case they don’t have anything he likes at the Hogwarts’ supper. He can go a day or two without eating comfortably, but he doesn’t want to rely on his mysterious care packages for every meal if he can help it. He knows that Petunia would say to save his potions ingredients for potions, no matter how appetizing they look.

He sucks happily on a blood pop and trades away anything too sweet to the boy across from him with the rat.

“Is muggle candy any good?” Ron asks, and Harry shakes his head and slurps a jelly slug with traces of real slug.

“No,” he confides, “Muggle candy is all boring.” He shakes chocolate covered ants onto the corned beef sandwich, and though he gets a strange look from his new friend, the addition settles his stomach enough that he can eat it.

“Are you  _ sure  _ you don’t want to go see Lee Jordan’s tarantula?” Harry prods, but Ron is firm in his decision, and Harry would rather stay with his first Not-Dudley human friend then venture off in search of giant spiders on his own. One day maybe he’ll convince Ron, and they can go see a giant spider together. Or at least perhaps a very big snake.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Mistaken Identity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967374) by [CrystalAzul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrystalAzul/pseuds/CrystalAzul)


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